“Ideal” Body Sizes Over the Decades

In this video, BuzzFeed shows essentially a time lapse of the body standards over the decades–starting from Ancient Egyptian times, to the present.

BuzzFeed does an excellent job describing and showing how beauty standards have been continuously changing almost every decade. In the 1920s, the perfect body was seen as flat chested, a downplayed waist, a short bob hairstyle, and boyish figures. However, fast forward sixty years to the “Supermodel Era” and the perfect body consisted of an athletic build, slightly curvy, with toned arms.

It’s hard to keep up, right?

Beauty standards are constantly changing. Whether it is how you do your makeup, your hair, or what the shape of your body is, there will always be this “standard” of beauty engrained in our society. These standards are put in place by the misogynistic nature of our culture. We submit to these standards put in place because that is what we know; but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

It is important to look at these changing beauty trends with a critical eye on not only the misogynistic nature of our culture and the ideal that women are here to please men, but also the capitalistic society that we live in. These beauty standards may be changing due to larger corporations controlling them in order to make money. It is important to note the facets of our society and how it is contracted in order to understand the ways that beauty standards change over the years.